Back around February, I sent a letter to Dianne Feinstein on the issue of gun control.
Today, I get this e-mail.
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Here is a similar letter from Feinstein to a friend in February, which I posted at the time. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2013/02/dianne-feinstein-speaks.html
Dear (name withheld)
Thank you for contacting me to share your opposition to assault weapons legislation. I respect your opinion on this important issue and welcome the opportunity to provide my point of view.
Mass shootings are a serious problem in our country, and I have watched this problem get worse and worse over the 40 years I have been in public life. From the 1966 shooting rampage at the University of Texas that killed 14 people and wounded 32 others, to the Newtown massacre that killed 20 children and 6 school teachers and faculty, I have seen more and more of these killings. I have had families tell me that they no longer feel safe in a mall, in a movie theater, in their business, and in other public places, because these deadly weapons are so readily available. These assault weapons too often fall into the hands of grievance killers, juveniles, gangs, and the deranged.
I recognize that the Second Amendment provides an individual right to bear arms, but I do not believe that right is unlimited or that it precludes taking action to prevent mass shootings. Indeed, in the same Supreme Court decision that recognized the individual right to bear arms, District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court also held that this right, like other constitutional rights, is not unlimited. That is why assault weapons bans have consistently been upheld in the courts, both before and after the Heller decision. I believe regulation of these weapons is appropriate.
Once again, thank you for your letter. Although we may disagree, I appreciate hearing from you and will be mindful of your thoughts as the debate on this issue continues. If you have any additional comments or questions, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841.
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Comment: It looks like the form letter has been slightly revised.
7 comments:
So, do you have an objection? Or did you post this letter to implicitly show your appreciation for Feinstein's balanced approach?
I don't find the letter very coherent, because I'm always interested in consistent standards for exactly WHERE the limits to constitutional rights lie.
Courts have accepted viewpoint-neutral time place and manner restrictions on freedom of speech, but restrictions that favor one viewpoint over another are verboten. That's not hard to understand.
I would favor viewpoint-neutral time place and manner restrictions on firearms... but I'd like something definite on what the limits are, rather than vague talk about how rights are not unlimited.
If the contours of the right are not DELINEATED then there is no right at all.
This is a prime example of the inconsistency of adopting what I call the "consequentialist" view of some things but not others. Feinstein is certainly correct about the consequences of the use of guns in violent activities, but she is absolutely incorrect that registration, licensing, bans, etc., have any effect at all in reducing that violence. They may, even probably, contribute to it.
Consider this 1764 Jefferson quote, which makes perfect sense today: "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man".
If we are to apply Feinstein's yardstick equitably, gun violence directly or indirectly adversely affects some tens of thousands of us annually.
Abortion rights, however, result in over 1 million abortions annually, adversely affecting not only fetuses/babies (depending on your definitions and position as to when life occurs) but parents, grandparents, etc., to the tune of several million people.
Successful voter fraud in U.S. Congressional/Presidential elections adversely affects anywhere from several hundred thousand to tens of millions to over 300 million of us whenever it happens.
Intellectual honesty would then appear to dictate that if "consequentiality" (is that even a word??) requires very strict gun regulations, to include some banning as Feinstein and many others want, then abortions and voting should be even more restricted than are guns.
Doesn't work that way, since the most rabid anti-gunners resist any efforts on abortion restrictions and want abortion on demand, at any time, for any reason, or even for no reason.
These same people also oppose any restrictions on voting, and want instant registration(if there has to be registration at all) with no questions , and no ID requirement or proof of citizenship or other eligibility, essentially resulting in people being able to vote as early and as often as they wish, wherever they wish.
elwood is meandering in his usual meaningless manner...
As many conservatives are fond of pointing out, Jefferson had rather too much faith in human virtue. Among other things, it never occured to him that a law abiding man or woman might, on a bad day, or in a bad mood, under real or imagined provocation, commit a serious crime that they might regret five minutes or five days later, but the deed would be done.
Its not about the purely virtuous vs. the purely criminal. Its about real live people, who are all over the map. Not to mention the woman with no rap sheet who builds up a small arsenal legally in her home, only to have her deranged son kill her and take the weapons to go shoot up an elementary school.
I'm a second amendment guy myself, and I never thought highly of Feinstein, but I see some room for "time place and manner" restrictions, and some limitations on people with a known likelihood to commit crimes being able to buy a gun with ease.
Abortions do not adversely affect anyone who has been born. Speculatively rambling about the adverse impact on people who have not been born and never will be born is ludicrous. What about all the people who would have been born if this sperm rather than that sperm had won the race to the egg? The phantom legions are infinite.
And voter fraud of a scale to swing a statewide or national election exists only in the fevered imagination of people nursing sour grapes over not seeing their preferred outcome of the last election. You talk about it in grandiose terms, but the hard evidence is entirely absent, for a good reason. Where there's no smoke, there's no fire.
"And voter fraud of a scale to swing a statewide or national election exists only in the fevered imagination of people nursing sour grapes over not seeing their preferred outcome of the last election. You talk about it in grandiose terms, but the hard evidence is entirely absent, for a good reason. Where there's no smoke, there's no fire."
I could argue - Florida in 2000 (close, but no cigar) and Illinois in 1960 (cigar)
PS:
Hello!!!!
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/02/top-staffer-for-florida-democratic-rep-resigns-amid-voting-fraud-probe/
Siarlys,
Seldom have you made so many silly statements in one comment:
"Speculatively rambling about the adverse impact on people who have not been born and never will be born is ludicrous."
They never got a chance to live-and that includes that monster in Philadelphia, Gosnell.
Florida is a case in point for what I said Gary: one staffer of one congress rep, without authorization, made an amateurish attempt that made no difference to the outcome, and he was rather promptly found out and fired.
That's a far cry from congressional majorities and presidential elections being successfully stolen.
I've debunked your pathetic insinuations about Illinois in 1960 at least four times on your own site, and you continue to toss it up again, without proof, and without offering a scintilla of evidence that what I set forth is inaccurate.
That leaves Florida. We all know who carried Florida in 2000, the last time there was a serious controversy.
What made Gosnell monstruous is precisely the fact that fully formed babies were removed from the womb and killed. That's in no way comparable to zygotes that never grew into babies at all. Don't you wish that some other sperm had won the race to provide half the chromosomes of my mother's first born son? If one had, what about the adverse impact this would have had on ME?
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